GIMP

GIMP stands for the GNU Image Manipulation Program, a freely distributed program for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has a large feature set. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. It also makes the task of screenshots easy.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions. 

The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP 2.8.0

Price Free to download Size 19.2MB License GNU GPL v2 Developer First version written by Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball. Thousands of individuals have contributed since. Website www.gimp.org System Requirements pkg-config >=0.15.0 GTK+ 2.10.13 GLib 2.12.3 Pango >=1.12.2 ATK 1.6.1 FreeType2 2.1.7 Fontconfig 2.2.2 libart2 2.x dbus-glib Support Sites: GIMP Wiki, Graphics Planet, GUG Tutorials, Gimp Tutorials, GIMP Tutorials, gimpology, ghuj.com, gimps.de, GIMP Video Tutorials, Gimp Video Tutorials, 25 GIMP Tutorials, Tutorials Pointer Page, carol.gimp.org, Gimp stuff, gimps.de, Gimptalk, forum.meetthegimp.org, Gimp Chat, Gimp User Group Forums, Mailing Lists, "5 Awesome GIMP Brush Sets, 20 (More) Awesome GIMP Brush Sets, How to Make The GIMP's Layout Like Photoshop's, Meet the GIMP, Grokking the GIMP, chromeCode, mmiworks, codecave, Shallow Thoughts, Libre Graphics World Selected Reviews: LinuxUser, Christine Moore, PC Magazine, Penguin Pete's Blog, blogspot, Ciao, Softpedia

Features include:

• A full suite of painting tools including brushes, a pencil, an airbrush, cloning, etc.
• Digital retouching
• Tile-based memory management, so image size is limited only by available disk space
  
• Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high-quality anti-aliasing
• Full Alpha channel support for working with transparency
• Layers and channels
• Scalable Brushes
• Fullscreen Editing
• Color Management and Soft-proofing
• A procedural database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs, such as Script-Fu
• Advanced scripting capabilities
• Multiple undo/redo
• Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
• File formats supported include GIF, JPEG, PNG, XPM, TIFF, TGA, MPEG, PS, PDF, PCX, BMP and many others
• Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, bezier and intelligent
• Plug-ins that allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters
• Support for vector layers using the GFig plug-in
• Support for various input devices out of the box. Pressure and tilt sensitive tablets, but also a wide range of USB or MIDI controllers

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GIMP also features in our 'Linux Equivalents to Windows Software' section. The category selector below allows you to filter the different types of software included in that separate article.

Last Updated Sunday, August 05 2012 @ 10:32 AM EDT